Tell Us More, Everything
EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You begins a lot like the first scenes of Twin Peaks. A pretty high-school student’s family goes through their morning routine, trying not to panic that their daughter is missing. Not in her room; not with the boy she’s been hanging out with early; not at the school early. Of course, what we know and they don’t: Their daughter is already dead in the lake.
Here’s maybe the biggest difference between the novel and Lynch’s show, though: Instead of being the popular, prom Queen blonde, this novel’s ill-fated star is Lydia Lee, a girl with no friends, seen only with a boy that everyone knows doesn’t love her, one of only two non-white students in the entire school (the other being her older brother, Nath). And also unlike Twin Peaks, no major investigation is launched, nobody from the police force really seems to care or even think this could be anything other than a suicide, maybe, unfortunately, because of her race.
It starts as a simple who-did-it, why, what’s-the-motive, and quickly becomes the story of many of the problems Americans want to think about the least – race, bullying, the role of a married woman, the role of a girl in the world.
From these unravelings, we get the stories of the rest of her family. Her mother, a white woman named Marilyn who was desperate to become another other than the cookie-cutter matrons she saw in her youth. Unaccording to plan, she fell in love and became pregnant before finishing her school with a man who, unaccording to her parents’ plans, was Chinese. To complicate the pain of the investigation of her daughter’s death, the police keep digging up the past dirt of Marilyn’s marriage, including the time she ran away from home, from her husband and children.
Her father, James, has always wanted to just fit in. It’s not easy being the only Asian in the room, or the only non-Caucasian person in town. He loves Marilyn, but there’s a part of him that wishes she could truly understand rather than just empathize. He knows it’s wrong, but after Lydia’s funeral, James begins an affair with his assistant, a young Chinese woman. It’s not a betrayal of his family; it’s something else entirely.
Nath, Lydia’s older brother cannot stop thinking about a time when the two were young. Even though he knew Lydia couldn’t swim (and until her teens, never showed any ability), in childhood frustration and envy, he pushed her out of the boat, only to pull her to safety moments later. Still, this action haunts him years later. Also haunting Nath is the suspicion Lydia’s boyfriend, or whatever you’d want to call that scum bag Jack, has more to do with Lydia’s death than the police are willing to acknowledge. Jack’s been tormenting Nath for years – wouldn’t it make perfect sense to hurt Nath by hurting his little sister?
Finally, there’s the youngest in the family, Hannah. So quiet you barely notice her in a scene. Her family often overlooks her tucked under a table, hearing their conversations and absorbing their secrets. Like a small mouse, the only remaining daughter is forgotten as those older than her deal with their own traumas.
It’s intense. It really is. There’s nothing you can say to make any of these characters feel better. Even though it’s set in the 70’s, you can’t help but feel these problems would look so tragically the same today, unfair as that all is.
It’s a masterful look into the struggles of growing up different, of living in a mixed-race family in a town and a time that doesn’t get it. It’s a beautiful tale of redemption, of suffering and forgiveness. Even if the end doesn’t have the solution you’d desire, you’re left a little bit better just having read along the whole time.
